Version 1.31 was a breaking change. The extension now requires wfLoadExtension and the WebVideoTranscode PHP constants are now expressed as string values instead

The TimedMediaHandler extension allows you to display audio and video files in wiki pages, using the same syntax as for image files. It includes the Kaltura HTML5 Player and an experimental VideoJS Player. There is support for subtitles and captions (aka Timed Text) and real time stream switching between multiple WebM and other derivatives and many other features. TMH server side support includes options for uploading HTML5 audio and video, multiple transcode profiles to deliver content, Metadata parsing for Ogg and WebM videos and integrates with MediaWiki's jobQueue system for scheduling transcoding jobs.

Feature Overview

Syntax synopsis

Display a video at its nominal size. Displays a still image from the midpoint with a play button to start an embedded player.

[[File:Audio.oga|File:Audio.oga]]

Show a placeholder for a sound file, with a play button to start an embedded player.

[[File:Video.ogv|thumb]]

Show a video in a floating thumbnail box

<gallery>File:Video.ogv</gallery>

Show a video embedded in an image gallery ( each clip will popup a dialog for the full player )

[[File:Video.ogg|thumbtime=1:25]]

Use a frame from 1 minute 25 seconds into the video as the placeholder image. A single number is taken as an offset in seconds.

[[File:Video.ogg|start=1:25]]

Temporal media fragments Displays a video clip starting at 1 minute 25 seconds into the video. A single number is taken as an offset in seconds. You can also include an end time of the form end=1:30 Which would result in a clip of 5 seconds playing from 1:25 to 1:30. If thumbtime is not provided, the start time will be used for the displayed thumbnail.

Deprecated

The syntax words noicon and noplayer are deprecated and do not function. The keyword disablecontrols will likely be deprecated soon. It takes the following values: options, timedText, fullscreen

Client support

The player works on most modern browsers and supports IE9 and later (The modern browsers as described in MediaWiki's support matrix).
Mobile support is spotty, especially on iOS.

As of August 2015, TimedMediaHandler includes a JavaScript compatibility shim for Ogg audio/video that works in Safari, Internet Explorer 10/11, and Microsoft Edge browsers.

Third-party users of MediaWiki may also wish to manually enable MP4 H.264/AAC support for native video and audio playback in Safari/IE/Edge, but when using these formats you may need a patent license from MPEG-LA for internet broadcasting.

Ynstallaasje

Also see the README for detailed install instructions. Note that, although MwEmbedSupport was included in TimedMediaHandler for MediaWiki 1.31 and later, for MediaWiki versions prior to that you will need to download it from the archive page.

You will want a recent version of ffmpeg in order to support encoding to WebM ( with the latest version of VP8). j^ supplies up-to-date static builds of ffmpeg with WebM support for major OSs at firefogg.org/nightly/.

Download and place the file(s) in a directory called TimedMediaHandler in your extensions/ folder.

Comparison of Wikipedia media encoding options

See /VP9 transition for deployment details on planned Wikimedia update from VP8 to VP9.

Sorted by bandwidth tier (grayed items are not currently enabled):

Bitrate

Mbit/s

WebM VP8

WebM VP9

Super Low

0.08

160p

Very Low

0.16

160p

240p

Low

0.25

240p

360p

Moderate

0.5

360p

480p

Medium

1.0

480p

720p

High

2.0

720p

1080p

Very high

4.0

1080p

1440p

Super high

8.0

2160p

Detailed options:

Namme

160P

240P

360P

480P

720P

1080P

160P

240P

360P

480P

720P

1080P

1440P

2160P

Container

WebM

Fideo

Kodearring

VP8

VP9

Max width (pixels)

288

426

640

854

1280

1920

288

426

640

854

1280

1920

2560

4096

Max height (pixels)

160

240

360

480

720

1080

160

240

360

480

720

1080

1440

2160

Bitrate (Mbit/s)

0.16

0.25

0.5

1.0

2.0

4.0

0.08

0.16

0.25

0.5

1.0

2.0

4.0

8.0

Audio

Kodearring

Vorbis

Opus

Kanalen

2 (stereo)

(pass-through)

Sampling rate (Hz)

44100

48000

Kwaliteit

-

1

2

3

-

(default)

Konfiguraasje

This section is out of date -- please update me

Here are some configuration variables which may be useful:

// The minimum size for an embed video player ( smaller than this size uses a pop-up player )$wgMinimumVideoPlayerSize=200;// If transcoding is enabled for this wiki (if disabled, no transcode jobs are added and no// transcode status is displayed). Note if remote embedding an asset we will still check if// the remote repo has transcoding enabled and associated flavors for that media embed.$wgEnableTranscode=true;// The total amout of time a transcoding shell command can take:$wgTranscodeBackgroundTimeLimit=3600*8;// Maximum amount of virtual memory available to transcoding processes in KB$wgTranscodeBackgroundMemoryLimit=2*1024*1024;// 2GB avconv, ffmpeg2theora mmap resources so virtual memory needs to be high enough// Maximum file size transcoding processes can create, in KB$wgTranscodeBackgroundSizeLimit=3*1024*1024;// 3GB// Number of threads to use in avconv for transcoding$wgFFmpegThreads=1;// The NS for TimedText (registered on MediaWiki.org)// https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension_namespace_registration// Note commons pre-dates TimedMediaHandler and should set $wgTimedTextNS = 102 in LocalSettings.php$wgTimedTextNS=710;// Set TimedText namespace for ForeignDBViaLBRepo on a per wikiID basis// $wgTimedTextForeignNamespaces = array( 'commonswiki' => 102 );$wgTimedTextForeignNamespaces=array();/*** Default enabled transcodes** -If set to empty array, no derivatives will be created* -Derivative keys encode settings are defined in WebVideoTranscode.php** -These transcodes are *in addition to* the source file.* -Only derivatives with smaller width than the source asset size will be created* -Regardless of source size at least one WebM and Ogg source will be created from the $wgEnabledTranscodeSet* -Derivative jobs are added to the MediaWiki JobQueue the first time the asset is uploaded* -Derivative should be listed min to max*/// Starting from 1.31// All valid string values are listed in the extension's extension.json file $wgEnabledTranscodeSet=['160p.webm'=>true,'240p.webm'=>true,'360p.webm'=>true,'480p.webm'=>true,'720p.webm'=>true,'1080p.webm'=>true,];$wgEnabledAudioTranscodeSet=['vorbis'=>true,'mp3'=>true,];// Before 1.31$wgEnabledTranscodeSet=[WebVideoTranscode::ENC_WEBM_160P,WebVideoTranscode::ENC_WEBM_240P,WebVideoTranscode::ENC_WEBM_360P,WebVideoTranscode::ENC_WEBM_480P,WebVideoTranscode::ENC_WEBM_720P,WebVideoTranscode::ENC_WEBM_1080P];$wgEnabledAudioTranscodeSet=[WebVideoTranscode::ENC_OGG_VORBIS,WebVideoTranscode::ENC_MP3,];// If mp3 source assets can be ingested:$wgTmhEnableMp3Uploads=true;// If mp4 source assets can be ingested:$wgTmhEnableMp4Uploads=false;

For transcoding, make sure you have $wgMaxShellMemory, $wgMaxShellTime, $wgMaxShellFileSize are large enough to allow encoding jobs to run and save output. Default values are most likely too low.

Running transcode jobs

Because transcode jobs are resource intensive they will not run as part of normal job queue ( see bug 29336 ) Instead they must be requested by the --type argument:

phpmaintenance/runJobs.php--typewebVideoTranscode

If running this command causes it to hang forever, you may need to set $wgTranscodeBackgroundTimeLimit = 0; in LocalSettings.php.
See task T206957.

Encoding nodes

To be able to transcode many videos you might want to run multiple encoding nodes that connect to the master db and access your file store directly. You will need to install ffmpeg.

Minimal install under Debian and Ubuntu

apt-get install ffmpeg

This extension is being used on one or more Wikimedia projects. This probably means that the extension is stable and works well enough to be used by such high-traffic websites. Look for this extension's name in Wikimedia's CommonSettings.php and InitialiseSettings.php configuration files to see where it's installed. A full list of the extensions installed on a particular wiki can be seen on the wiki's Special:Version page.